Review of Everest (2015) by Lucia D — 08 Oct 2015

Visually, the film was beautiful. I did not see it in 3-D. But the "plot" and character development were almost totally absent. The depiction of Scott Fischer was shameful and, as nearly as I can tell from reading a good bit about the tragedy at the time, inaccurate.

Full disclosure: I slightly knew Scott and his family when he was growing up in Basking Ridge, NJ and he taught my younger son, along with a number of other kids in town, how to climb. Beck Weathers, one of the clients, received more attention than many of the real people who were there.

For anyone not fairly familiar with the events of May 10-11, 1996, or who had not read one of the many books about the tragedy, this movie must have posed a bit of a challenge. So many characters appeared fleetingly and then receded and we kept cutting from one scene to the other with little apparent pattern or reason.

I wanted to see the film because of Scott Fischer's involvement and because I had read a good deal about the events of that fateful night at the time and since. Absent that interest, I would not have been interested in going to see the movie and nothing in it would have changed that opinion.